Recent decades have seen a rise in mental health problems among children and adolescents. Despite a proliferation of studies describing effective school-based mental health programs, reviews of current research in this field suggest a strong lack of consensus concerning the definition of school mental health and its constructs. In the present…

The COVID-19 pandemic has negative effects on children, adolescents, and adults. Despite these effects, information about the nature of mental health concerns and services provided to address these concerns by elementary school counselors is unknown. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to examine mental health concerns elementary…

Background: Educators in rural schools are uniquely situated to address youth mental health disparities, yet often face challenges in delivering mental health supports. This paper describes the process of adapting the evidence-based Coping Power program, a small group prevention program for youth with aggressive behavior problems, to be a…

School resource officers' (SROs) presence (e.g., engagement in patrol, carrying firearms, etc.) and prevention (e.g., mentoring, teaching) roles have not been distinguished in investigations of SROs' association with student outcomes. A model predicting nonviolent incidents and serious violent incidents reported to police from SRO presence and…

Threat assessment is a violence prevention strategy used to investigate and respond to threats to harm others. In 2013, Virginia mandated the use of threat assessment teams for threats to self and to others, effectively subsuming suicide assessment with threat assessment and raising questions about the distinction between the two practices. In a…

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue of Prevention Science entitled, "Innovations and Applications of Integrative Data Analysis (IDA) and Related Data Harmonization Procedures in Prevention Science." This special issue includes a collection of original papers from multiple disciplines that apply individual-level data…

This resource provides frameworks and strategies to guide schools as they encounter common psychosocial problems. It is designed as a desk reference aid. After an introductory overview of mental health in schools, Part I stresses ways to keep the environment in perspective as a cause of certain types of problems. Part II frames the full range of…

Anhedonia refers to the inability of experiencing pleasure in positive life events. It has been conceptualized as a stable yet malleable characteristic and is associated with hypoactivity in the mesolimbic and mesocortical dopaminergic systems. Very recently, it has been posited as an etiologic factor associated with drug addiction onset,…

This chapter reviews youth mental health interventions that promote behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement among school-aged youth within a three-tier framework. We first summarize empirical relationships between positive indicators of student engagement (e.g., subjective well-being; SWB) and negative indicators (e.g., internalizing and…

Mental health among children and adolescents is a growing national concern and schools have taken center stage in efforts to prevent problems and promote wellness. Although research and policymakers support the integration of mental health services into the schools, there is limited agreement on the ways to package or combine existing supports to…

Background: Preventing externalizing problems in children is a major societal concern, and a great number of intervention programs have been developed to this aim. To evaluate their preventive effects, well-controlled trials including follow-up assessments are necessary. Methods: This is a systematic review of the effect of prevention programs…

The University of California, San Francisco's Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools (HEARTS) Program promotes school success for trauma-impacted students through a whole-school approach utilizing the response to intervention multi-tiered framework. Tier 1 involves school-wide universal supports to change school cultures into…

Universal screening for complete mental health is proposed as a key step in service delivery reform to move school-based psychological services from the back of the service delivery system to the front, which will increase emphasis on prevention, early intervention, and promotion. A sample of 2,240 high school students participated in a schoolwide…

Students learn or progress at their own paces. Each needs different amounts of support, at different points in a school career and at different times of the school year. Some need very little help to stay on track, while others are facing serious challenges in learning, in their behavior, or at home, and need significant interventions. It would…

In this study, the authors reviewed journal articles published between 1995 and 2010 that described student mental health interventions involving parents delivered in school settings. Their review identified 100 articles describing 39 interventions. On the basis of participant selection criteria provided by the authors of the reviewed articles,…